Zhihu Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Jehu Inc. fourth quarter and full year 2025 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a Q&A session. Today's conference is being recorded and webcasted. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Yolande Leo. Head of IR and Capital Markets. Please go ahead, madam.

Thank you, Heidi. Hello, everyone. Welcome to JUHU's 2025 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Financial Results Conference Call. Joining me today on the call from Senior Management Team are Mr. Zhou Yuan, Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Wang Han, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Security Legation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, actual results may be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties is included in our public filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable law. Additionally, the discussion today will include both GAAP and non-GAAP financial results for a comparison purpose only. For reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, please refer to our earnings release issue earlier today. In addition, a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on our IR website at ir.zhuo.com. Today, Victor Zhou, an AI agent representing Mr. Zhou Yuan, will deliver prepared remarks in English on his behalf. As Victor is still being refined, we appreciate your understanding.

Victor, please go ahead.

Thank you, Yolanda. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining Zhihu's fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. I am Victor Zhou, and I'm pleased to deliver today's opening remarks on behalf of Mr. Zhou Yuan, founder, chairman, and CEO. In 2025, we achieved our first ever full-year non-GAAP profit. This historic milestone validates our strategic transformation and underscores the structural durability of our operational leverage. Full-year 2025 adjusted net income reached RMB 37.9 million, a substantial turnaround from the adjusted net loss of RMB 96.3 million in 2024. Our community engagement continues to thrive. In Q4, average daily time spent per user increased to over 41 minutes on the platform. Our ecosystem of trusted creators remains vibrant, consistently delivering authentic and high-quality content across diverse fields. At the same time, we accelerated AI integration within our community. The synergistic evolution of our high-quality content times expert network times AI capabilities continuously strengthened Jihoo's competitive mode in the AI era. In 2025, we successfully optimized our business structure. With a healthier commercial ecosystem, total revenue trend improved meaningfully in the fourth quarter, driven by a double-digit sequential increase in marketing services. Entering 2026, Amid the surging AI adoption, we are leveraging Zhihu's unique advantages to scale AI-driven commercialization, including rapidly building industry-leading expert data solutions and deploying AI productivity tools to accelerate IP monetization of our Yanyan Stories franchise. These initiatives will unlock new commercial opportunities for Zhihu. These efforts are anchored by a robust self-sustaining ecosystem. The powerful synergies between high-quality content, our expert network, and expanding AI capabilities have created a positive feedback loop, driving heightened community activity and interaction. In the fourth quarter, our daily engagement metrics strengthened significantly. Average daily time spent per user increased sharply both year over year and sequentially to over 41 minutes. Substantial year-over-year growth in positive user interactions also drove notable improvements in both short- and long-term new user intentions. High-quality content on our platform continues to surge. In Q4, data creation of high-quality content rose by over 20% year-over-year, contributing to over 31% growth for the full year. Notably, professional AI-related content increased by over 30% year-over-year. As the global AI landscape has shifted from capability races to architectural innovation and system integration, Zhihu remains a leading forum for prominent researchers and frontline engineers to share insights, unpack complex topics, and debate key issues. As a vanguard of the AI revolution, our community hosted extensive high-level discussions on key topics such as DeepSeq's N-gram architecture, Chen Wen's NeurIPS winning mechanisms, and the continuous iterations of Kimmy and Zippo. The conversation has moved from stronger models to effective system deployment, emphasizing tiered agent architectures and workflow redesign in products like OpenClaw and CloudCowork. The debut of Unitree robots at the Spring Festival Gala together with Tesla and FIGURES' progress toward mass-producing humanoid robots have fueled a critical analysis of embodied AI roadmaps. As founders and employees from leading AI enterprises personally engage on Jihu to answer questions and address concerns, our platform remains a trusted space where AI innovations are first explained, validated, and responsibly disseminated. We continue to leverage AI to upgrade our community governance and content mechanism. By replacing manual operations with algorithm-driven automated workflows, we enhanced community governance efficiency and precision. We introduced new metrics for trustworthy content recognition and promotion while integrating user feedback into our evaluation framework. These measures effectively reduced system noise dynamically suppressing low quality content and elevating the overall user experience. Professional creators remain the backbone of GFOO's expert network. In the fourth quarter, daily active high tier creators grew by double digit year over year. A number of verified owner creators rose by nearly 30% as we continue to strengthen incentives for top tier creators while supporting their efforts to expand industry influence. Our G42025 annual review highlighted exceptionally robust high-tier creator engagement. In AI and technology, leading AI companies, including DeepSeq, Moonshot, Tongyi Qianwen, ByteDanceSeed, Zipu, and Stepfarm actively engaged on our platform through their official accounts. Creators with frontline industry and R&D backgrounds consistently shared cutting-edge insights on our platform contributing to major industry discussions. For the full year, AI-focused creators grew by approximately 16%. In fundamental sciences, such as astronomy and chemistry, high-profile creators actively joined our flagship online and offline science programs. Their authoritative content sparked a widespread discussion beyond our community, driving higher search interest for related topics. On the product side, ideas remains the primary channel for high-frequency knowledge sharing by professional creators, while Circles facilitates engagement around common interests. For the full year, average daily content volume on ideas grew 73.5%, and the average daily interactions doubled. This momentum persisted in the fourth quarter, with double-digit sequential growth across both metrics. We also increased support for mid-tier creators during the quarter, fostering a dynamic, growth-oriented ecosystem. Leveraging AI agents, we significantly improved our efficiency in identifying and nurturing talent. In circles, AI-powered prompts and standardized tools lowered creation barriers and enhanced content distribution. As a result, average daily content creation in Circles surged over 100% sequentially, with daily views up 72%. Beyond the AI-driven efficiency gains in content operations, creator support, and ecosystem management, Q4 also saw accelerated advances in our foundational AI capabilities, enhancing experiences for both creators and users. In search, creation, and consumption, we continue to deepen the integration of AI into the GFU community experience. In search, we completed an AI upgrade to our integrated search in December, introducing cross-topic content aggregation and hot trend summarization to create a new entry point for high-quality content discovery. We also tailored answer formats to different query types, which drove a double-digit increase in click-through rates for our AI direct answer cards. and meaningfully increased average AI search interactions per user through more multi-term conversations. In creation, AI is increasingly becoming a practical tool for creators on Zhihu. Since the fourth quarter, we have rolled out features such as content polishing and one-click enhancement, powered by intelligent editing, automated formatting, and image pairing capabilities. These tools lower the barrier to creation, improve readability, and distribution efficiency and help creators turn ideas into shareable content more efficiently. We are also introducing multi-modal capabilities such as AI-generated illustrations and image summarization to make long-form content more visually engaging and improve user conversion in the feed. In consumption and circulation, AI is helping JiHu content transcend traditional community boundaries. Through external ecosystem partnerships, we are extending our content capabilities into more intelligent assistant scenarios. Within the community, users are beginning to use AI in common threads for fact-checking and professional explanation, which supports more authentic interaction and follow-up discussion. Meanwhile, our AI reading panel on PC has improved the efficiency of long-form reading. through one-click summarization and terminology explanation, and is beginning to generate more valuable interest signals for future recommendation and monetization. Now, turning to commercialization, our efforts to optimize our commercial structure have yielded notable results. With a healthier business ecosystem, total revenue has entered the recovery phase, reaching RMB 643 5 million in the fourth quarter as the pace of sequential decline continued to narrow. This shows a clear top line recovery trajectory. At the same time, we are exploring new, scalable, AI-powered monetization avenues with an unwavering focus on long-term value and operational excellence. Let's take a closer look at our performance by segment. In the fourth quarter, marketing services revenue reached RMB 234 8 million, up 24% sequentially, as our adjustment cycle bottomed out. Disciplined execution in optimizing client mix and upgrading commercial products catalyzed this momentum, strengthening our appeal to high-value clients. We elevated overall client quality, deepened industry penetration, and accelerated new customer acquisition. In the fourth quarter, Our pool rose significantly among clients in high-value verticals such as technology and e-commerce. We also reached new segments in sectors such as automotive and healthcare. In December, we hosted the Electric Club New Knowledge Technology Conference, which brought together automotive engineers, autonomous driving specialists, and leading tech experts from the GFU community to explore NEV safety and intelligent upgrades. The event drove a 140% year-over-year increase in participating clients, enabling industry leaders like BYD, Mitsubishi, and Voya to articulate their technological strengths and safety values through targeted engagement and build trusted content assets. On commercial product upgrades, we leveraged our trusted content and expert network to expand the community-driven monetization and amplify the commercial value of our key IPs, such as Ji Hu Science Season and the Z Reviewers Jewelry. Revenue from IP-related projects increased 21% year-over-year, supported by deeper brand collaborations across our IP portfolio. At the same time, our IdeaPlus solution gained strong momentum during the quarter. By offering a lightweight, precisely targeted format, IdeaPlus extended our native advertising capabilities into short-form content, significantly shortening the path from discovery to purchase, capitalizing on a 106% year-over-year increase in daily ideas interactions. IdeaPlus achieved a 62% sequential increase in client numbers and 200% sequential growth in average daily client spend. In 2026, supported by a healthier commercial ecosystem, we aim to drive continued recovery and sustainable long-term growth in marketing services. Next, turning to the business we currently report under paid membership, which we increasingly see evolving into a broader content and IP operations business. Paid membership remains a revenue contributor of this segment, In the fourth quarter, average monthly paid members reached 12.2 million, generating RMB 333.5 million in revenue. Short-term membership fluctuations aligned with expectations as our structural adjustments prioritize fundamental improvements in service experience and profitability. To support a smooth transition during this phase, we are exploring new growth drivers, initiatives, to improve member retention and R pool are yielding results. Q4 average R pool increased by 1.4% sequentially, and overall quarterly renewal rates improved by 2.7 percentage points. Beyond the paid memberships, we are maximizing content IPs value across media adaptations and licensing. IP monetization revenue, which is currently recognized in other revenues, grew more than five-fold year-over-year in the first quarter and doubled for the full year, underscoring the significant growth potential of this business. The monetization potential of our Yanyan Story IP continued to translate into tangible results. In December, two adapted short dramas, Fang and Xia, and The Seventh Year of Secret Love for My Childhood Friend premiered on Tencent Video, quickly ranking among the platform's top releases. Fang and Xia set an all-time popularity record for vertical short dramas on the platform, while Seventh Year of Secret Love for My Childhood Friend topped the charts and sparked widespread discussion across social media. These results demonstrate our IP's strong adaptation potential and mainstream appeal. During the quarter, we released our short story influence list for the third consecutive year, recognizing 62 outstanding works and 20 authors. The selection includes both mature IP already adapted into film and television, as well as a pipeline of high quality titles with strong multi-format development potential. Together, these initiatives highlight our scalable pathway for long-term value creation, cultivating high quality content, structuring an IP portfolio, and extending it across multiple formats to unlock compounding growth. Looking ahead, rapid advances in multimodal AI and the rising industry productivity are expected to further expand monetization opportunities for YanyanStory IP, creating new growth potential for our content and IP operations business. Building on this, we are exploring a new format for IP development, AI-powered comic dramas emerging format driven by demand for lightweight content and improved generative model efficiency. Positioned upstream, Zhihu leverages a dense network of high-quality creators and rich content assets, giving us a natural advantage as a stable source of premium IP. Strategically, we will pursue a dual-track approach of IP licensing and in-house incubation. We will also collaborate with platforms and studios to unlock mature IP value while building in-house AI production capabilities. Turning to other revenues, beginning in the third quarter, to improve profitability, we consolidated our vocational training and the new initiatives into other revenues, which totaled RMB 75.2 million in Q4. We believe 2026 will mark another leap in AI productivity complemented by rapid expansion of real-world applications. Leveraging Zhihu's unique strengths, we are accelerating exploration of AI-related monetization. We also see growing potential in expert data solutions as competition among LLMs increasingly shifts from scale alone to alignment quality and real-world generalization. High-value, traceable, and structured data is now the core driver of model performance. With our long-standing expert network and authentic discussion scenarios, Zhihu is well positioned upstream in the supply of high-quality knowledge and insight, and we believe we can be among the earliest platforms in China to systematically define and commercialize high-value data solutions. To support this opportunity, we are developing our expert data solution capabilities. At the same time, we are also exploring how to engage experts more deeply in data construction and labeling processing that supports model training and alignment. In summary, achieving full-year non-gap profitability in 2025 marks a pivotal milestone for Zhihu, validating the resilience of our strategy and the strength of our execution. In 2026, we remain committed to prioritizing disciplined operations while accelerating AI integration across our community and commercial models. We are sharpening our strategic focus and optimizing resource allocation. In our established businesses, we will continue to prioritize ecosystem health and user experience, leveraging AI to drive efficiency gains and elevate content quality. At the same time, we are doubling down on AI-driven monetization innovations to cultivate new scalable growth engines. We are confident that 2026 will usher in a new era of high-quality growth for Chifu, defined by the further realization of our unique AI capabilities and monetization potential. With that, I will hand the call over to our CFO, Wang Han, whose remarks will be delivered through his AI voice agent. Han, please go ahead.

I will now go over our fourth quarter financials. For a complete overview of our results, please refer to our press release issued earlier today. 2025 represents a structural upgrade in Jihoo's financial profile. As Victor noted, we achieved our first four-year non-GAAP profitability milestone. Financially, this progress was driven by sustained cost discipline. improve operating leverage, and tighter expense control while maintaining healthy gross margins. For the full year, we recorded non-GAAP net income of RMB 37.9 million and our non-GAAP operating loss narrowed by 33.6% year-over-year. These results reflect the cumulative impact of our multi-quarter structural optimization and provide a strong foundation to build on as we enter 2026. Now turning to the fourth quarter. Our total revenues for the quarter were RMB $643.5 million, compared with RMB $859.2 million in the same period of 2024. The year-over-year decrease continued to reflect our ongoing efforts to optimize revenue mix and focus on sustainable, high-quality growth. Notably, the pace of sequential decline continued to narrow, reinforcing a clear top-line recovery trajectory. Our marketing services revenue for the quarter was RMB 234.8 million compared with RMB 315.9 million in the same period of 2024. While the year-over-year decline reflects our proactive refinement of service offerings, the sequential trend was notably positive. Marketing services revenue grew 24% sequentially, marking a clear inflection point in our recovery. This momentum was driven by stronger client quality, deeper industry penetration, and a successful ramp-up of new commercial products. Paid membership revenue was RMB $333.5 million. Compared with RMB $422 million in the same period of 2024, average monthly subscribing members were $12.2 million. The year-over-year decline in membership was expected and reflects our deliberate prioritization of unit economics over scale. That said, We deliver sequential improvements in both ARPPU and renewal rates during the quarter, which we view as early validation that our retention initiatives are gaining traction. Other revenues were RMB $75.2 million compared with RMB $123.1 million in the same period of 2024. The decrease primarily reflected the strategic refinement of our vocational training business, partially offset by growth of revenues generated from our intellectual property derivatives business Our gross profit for the quarter was RMB $344.8 million compared with RMB $540.7 million in the same period of 2024. Gross margin was 53.6% compared with 62.9% in the same period of 2024. The decrease in gross margin was primarily due to our ongoing efforts to broaden and enhance content offerings for all users. Our total operating expenses for the quarter were RMB $608.7 million compared with RMB $528.8 million in the same period of 2024. The increase was primarily due to a one-time non-cash goodwill impairment charge of RMB $126.3 million, which was primarily associated with our prior acquisitions, mainly driven by lower valuations amid the current market conditions. Excluding this item, Underlying operating expenses continue to decline year over year as we further streamline spending across key areas. Selling and marketing expenses decreased by 13% to RMB 275.2 million from RMB 316.2 million in the same period of 2024, driven by more disciplined marketing spend and lower personnel related expenses. Research and development expenses decreased 16% to RMB $123.1 million from RMB $146.6 million in the same period of 2024. The decrease was primarily driven by ongoing improvements in our research and development efficiency. General and administrative expenses were RMB $84 million compared with RMB $66 million in the same period of 2024, primarily due to higher share-based compensation expenses. Our gap net loss for the quarter was RMB 210.8 million compared with RMB 86.4 million in the same period of 2024. On a non-gap basis, adjusted net loss was RMB 39.4 million compared with adjusted net income of RMB 97.1 million in the same period of 2024. As of the 31st of December 2025, we held RMB 4.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents. current and non-current term deposits, restricted cash, and short-term investments, compared with RMB 4.9 billion as of the 31st of December 2024. As of the 31st of December 2025, we repurchased 31.1 million Class A ordinary shares on the open market for an aggregate value of US dollars 66.5 million. In addition, throughout 2025, we repurchased a total of 16.6 million Class A ordinary shares through the company's trustee for an aggregate value of US dollar 23.4 million, representing 6.29% of the total issued ordinary shares. Looking ahead, we will further enhance earnings quality and scalability by prioritizing higher margin, more capital efficient revenue streams. We will continue to strengthen our monetization capabilities and explore new, AI-powered revenue models while leveraging Jihu's core strengths, high-quality content, a respected expert network, and advanced AI capabilities. Coupled with disciplined capital allocation, including share repurchases, these actions will reinforce our financial resilience and support sustainable long-term value creation.

Thank you.

If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press 1 1 again.

We will take our first question. Your first question comes from the line of Xuqing Zhang from CICC. Please go ahead, your line is open. Duking Zhang from CICC, your line is open. Please ask your question.

Thank you for accepting my question. My question is about financial prospects. I would like to ask about the company's revenue period in 2026, and how we will achieve balance between investment and cash flow revenue. Thank you. Thanks, management, for taking my question and my question about your financial outlook. So firstly, what's your earnings outlook in 2026 and how to balance the investment with the cash flow and the profitability? Thank you.

Hi, I'm Wang Han from CFO, and I'll answer this question. First of all, our 25 years have proven that the household can make a profit. But as we all know, AI's position and self-esteem are much higher than they are now. We won't just simply go, we'll make more profit this year and make more profit next year. At this point, we won't have that many meaningful profits. We'll have to seize the opportunity to invest in AI in this era. But we don't have to worry about the break-even that we've reached. We'll go back to the way we used to grow. We will carefully consider the new business, choose to be able to see the direction of ROI and fit the call of resources. Let everyone see that the new AI income can have a certain growth while ensuring that the overall bottom line is still in a relatively healthy state.

Thanks for the question, Sheqing. This is from Zhihu CFO Wang Han. So first, 2025 demonstrated that Zhihu can achieve profitability. But more importantly, we believe given our unique assets and positioning, Zhihu's opportunity set in the AI era is meaningfully larger than what we current skill reflects. So we are not pursuing a single path of delivering profitability this year, more profitability next year, and then turning to dividends. At our current scale, that would not generate a particular meaningful level of returns for our shareholders. So what we want to do instead is stay focused on the opportunities created by AI and invest behind them. At the same time, this does not mean we will abandon the bottom line discipline that we worked hard to achieve or return to the old model of burning significant cash for growth. We will be disciplined in selecting new initiatives, concentrating our investments on areas with visible ROI potential and a strong fit with JUJU's core strengths. In other words, we want to deliver growth in new AI-driven revenue streams at the same time to keep the overall bottom line on a healthy and responsive track.

Thanks for your question.

Thank you.

We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Daisy Shen from Haitong International. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

I'll translate myself. Thanks, Madeline, for taking my question. At the current stage, what is your strategy in terms of commercialization and what are the company's core priorities for 2026? Thank you.

Thank you for your question. I will answer this question first. You asked about the overall strategy and priority of the company. In general, we want to ensure that Zhihu will continue to use AI for community-oriented business. So thanks for your question.

I will get started with my answers. This is from Zhihu CFO Wang Han. So in terms of the priority and the strategy in 2026, these are mainly centered on two tracks. First of all, in our core community business, we want to continue using AI to improve efficiency and deliver a better product experience for our users and content creators. At the same time, to maintain stable revenue and a healthier level of operating profitability. In other words, we want our core business to maintain steady while becoming increasingly AI enhanced and financially stronger over time.

At the same time, we want to fully leverage Zhuhu's unique assets to develop new AI businesses.

As I mentioned earlier, the new initiatives we choose will not be built around aggressive cash burn. We will focus on areas where we can see a path to healthy cash flow. Right now, we are mainly focused on two areas.

One is the AI short-term and long-term channel. With the upgrade of the video model, the production chain will become more and more simplified. The most lacking is the existing IP. And even if these players burn money, they can't get it in a short period of time. And it not only gathers a large number of high-quality software. The key is that we still have so many creators in our ecosystem that are continuously producing new technologies and new IPs. And the short-term and long-term market of AI is also verified by the market. It is a channel where users are willing to pay for the content of AI. So investing resources and energy in this field may be a good choice for us to bring objective and scalable AI income.

The first is AI-enabled short-form drama and comic adaption. As text-to-video and image-to-video models continue to evolve, the production chain is becoming increasingly streamlined. In that process, the scarce asset is high-quality upstream IP, and that is not something that can be acquired overnight simply by spending heavily. Zhihu's advantage is not only that we have accumulated a large library of high-quality copyrighted content, but also that we have a highly active creator ecosystem that continues to generate new ideas and new IPs More importantly, AI-generated short drama and the comic-style content have already shown that users are willing to pay for this type of AI content. So we believe this is one of the most promising areas where focused investment could generate meaningful and scalable AI revenue for us.

The second is the field of AI-related data services. In the case of all large-scale AI applications, in addition to Invitas, which is a company that sells water and products with high profits, there is also a channel that sells water and products with low profits, which is high-end data. Companies like Scale AI, Surge AI, and McCore in the US continue to provide high-end data for these AI labs. In a few years, it will become a company with tens of billions of customers and a positive cash flow. Um, um,

The second area is AI data services. At a time when many AI applications are still operating with heavy cash burn, there are only few categories in the ecosystem that can capture structurally attractive economies. One, of course, is represented by companies like Novadia. relatively smaller but still very attractive skill is high-quality data area. In U.S., companies such as SQL AI, Surge AI, and Macor has grown rapidly within just a few years by providing high-quality data services to leading LLM developers while also demonstrating healthy cash flow characteristics. So with our strong expert network and deepening understanding of high quality model data, we believe Juhu is well positioned to provide differentiated data solutions for all of these AI developers. At the same time, our community can continuously serve as new areas of expertise, emerging knowledge, and involving capabilities that LLMs have not yet fully covered. This gives Zhihu a very differentiated advantage in this field, and we believe this is also a business with a clear opportunity to generate a positive cash flow.

So, to put it simply, we hope that the whole of Xiaofu will be a stable and constantly improving AI-based financial situation.

So, in a word, what we want to deliver is a stable core business that continues to upgrade through AI with improving product capability and a healthy financial profile. Alongside new AI revenue streams that can grow in a disciplined way, The goal is not to pursue growth through excessive spending, but to build a new AI business with visible monetization potential and a path to positive cash flow. Thank you for your question.

Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1, 1 on your telephone. We will take our next question. The question comes from the line of Vicky Wei from Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

管理层晚上好,谢谢接受我的提问。 能不能请管理层给我们分享一些信息或者数据, 帮助我们理解AI对于知乎社区的影响, 然后在新的一年产品升级和用户体验提升方面, 我们会有哪些新的计划? management for taking my question. So could management share some data that will help us better understand the impact of AI on the Zhihu community? And additionally, with regard to product upgrades and user experience enhancement in the coming year, what new initiatives does Zhihu have in place? Thank you.

Hello, I'm Zhou Yuan. Let me answer this question. First of all, AI does not have to affect the community. Over the past few seasons, we have been actively promoting the integration of AI and the community. I can look at the integration of AI capabilities from the perspective of two groups of core users and new users.

Thanks for your question. I will take this question. This is from Zhihu CEO Zhou Yuan. So first of all, the impact of AI on our community has not been passive. Over the past few quarters, we have been actively driving this accelerating and deeper integration between AI and the Zhihu community with a clear focus on improving improving such as content consumption, creator experience, and so on. Broadly speaking, the positive changes from AI adoption can be seen across two groups, our core retained users and our new users.

First of all, on the core user, AI really helps our users and creators to be better understood and connected. And then the real social property between people is constantly being strengthened. In the past four seasons, the coverage and frequency of positive interaction of our large-scale users have all achieved the same improvement. Users have started to actively use the AI ability in the comment area, that is, the direct and direct ability, to carry out real-time verification, such as some professional information analysis and hot-point tracking. This is not to break the community atmosphere, to promote interaction and second discussion among more real users. Recently, we have also launched an AI reading panel on the PC side. Through a single summary and the explanation of various professional data, it has significantly improved the reading efficiency of long content. The experience of deep reading of core users has been significantly improved.

Starting with our core retained user, AI is helping users and creators better understand and to connect with each other, which further strength the social nature of real human interaction on our platform. In 4Q, both the coverage and frequency of the positive user interactions on the platform increase year-over-year we are also seeing users actively call on ai ai capabilities aka judah in in the comments section for things like fact checking explaining professional topics and the following training discussions importantly this is happening without disrupt disrupting the community atmosphere instead it is helping drive is helping drive more interaction and the full-on discussion among real users. More recently, we launched AI reading panel on PC with features such as one-click summaries and explanations of professional terms. It has meaningfully improved the reading efficiency of long-form content and significantly enhanced the deep reading experience for our core users.

As we mentioned earlier,

Daily newly added high-quality content in the community grew by over 20% year-over-year in 4Q. But beyond content volume, what we care more about is a positive shift in user and the creator's behavior. So through AI capabilities, such as intelligence editing multi-model associated creation will continue to lower the barrier. So we can see like the per-users interaction improved significantly in this quarter.

For those new users who have just entered the community, AI is effectively reducing their access to content, entering discussions, and participating in exchange thresholds. After the fourth quarter, the direct use of MAU continued to increase by more than 260%. The rate of flow rate increased by almost 83% in the fourth month. In February of this year, the average search volume of Japanese users increased by more than 16% compared to November of 2025.

For new users entering the community, AI is also lowering the barrier to content discovering, joining discussions, and participating in interactions. In 4Q25, the direct MAUs of Zhihu Zhida continue to grow by more than 260% year-over-year, while next month's retention improved by about 83% year-over-year. In February 26th, average daily search queries per DAU increased by more than 16% compared with November 25th.

We have already reported that we will further integrate the direct and medium search capabilities. In December, we have further completed the ability to receive. The direct and medium search capabilities have been further integrated. has become a new entry point for high-end content supply in the community. After this overlap, Zonesol will present a more appropriate answer or content form based on different types of queries. Since the launch, the coverage rate of AI-based card users has significantly increased. Our click rate, or CTR, has increased by two digits. The number of people searching for AI has also increased significantly.

As we shared previously, we mentioned that we complete another upgrade of the AI capability within Zhuhu's main search to further integrate Zhida with our broader search experience and making it a new entry point for high quality content for our users. So we see this happened in December. And after this upgrade, search can present more suitable answer formats based on different types of queries. Since launch, user coverage of A.I. of GDAC cards have increased meaningfully. CTR click-through rate saw double digits improved, and average A.I. searches per user also increased noticeably.

In terms of the new user experience upgrade plan, Okay, I will continue to deliver answers from our CEO, Zhou Yuan.

So for the looking forward perspective, Our plans are focused on two areas. First, we will continue investing in the experience gains we are already seeing from AI, both in terms of enabling more social interaction and efficiency for core return users and new users. So this direction here is already quite clear, and we have been building toward it step by step. On top of that, we are preparing to upgrade the GDAS core capability from AI search towards an agent-based experience. We believe this could bring broader product experience upgrades to users across community. Although there is still an innovation and execution process ahead of us, and we will continue to work through that rollout. So, this is from Zhihu CEO Zhou Yuan. Thanks for the question again.

Thank you. That concludes today's Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Yolanda for additional or closing remarks.

Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please contact our IR team directly or Chris Stinson Thank you. Thank you all.

This concludes today's conference call.

Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.